Cheap(er) Groceries living in West End?

[JacksonPanther]

Originally Posted by bigfatdude

I'm going to assume this inquiry is coming from a resident who's not making the big bucks yet, but is already getting whacked with big bucks med school student loan payment...

Cry me a river...

[missionhill]

Originally Posted by goyguy

The "urban removal" of the West End was an epic disaster undertaken during the delusional Great Society years of the 1960's. It was naively thought that "slum conditions" were most effectively addressed by blindly bulldozing the entire community and putting up sterile cubes in its place. You know, "cleaning up." It's scary how little history people are retaining, assuming they're even taught it in the first place.

Goy, please don't blame the Great Society years and ethos for the West End! That kind of clean-the-slate slum clearance was finished by the time the GS got going under President Lyndon B. Johnson. The West End was an Eisenhower era project although Ike had nothing to do with it; it was begun under Mayor Hynes and completed under Collins. Collins (Kennedy era) brought us the Government Center, City Hall and so on. Collins's man Ed Logue saw great differences between his selective renewal projects and the West End obliteration. The Great Society era urban renewal projects included work in the South End (including Castle Square, renovating existing bowfronts along West Newton St, and site prep for Villa Victoria and Tent City, among other things) and Washington Park in Roxbury. They involved some clearance but lots of rebuilding and the new buildings were for the community rather than for affluent newcomers. The present-day affluence of the South End has occurred despite the legacy of subsidized and public housing from that era. Not so in Washington Park, at least not yet.

It wasn't until '72 and the bold stroke of Republican Governor Frank Sargent that wholesale clearance ceased for new highway projects.